


A Name Held Against You

by ChuckTaylorUpset



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Critical Role 2
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Mollymauk's dead fic, on a completely unrelated note, the views of this fic are not the views of this author, warning for the narrator's perspective treating mollymauk & lucien as the same person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 21:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15445935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChuckTaylorUpset/pseuds/ChuckTaylorUpset
Summary: On the first day Molly doesn't say anything.  The three of them have carted his body on the back of a pack horse.  They have a spare.  After the battle no one had really wanted to travel with Keg for another day.That night they lay Mollymauk on a pallet, close enough to camp that they can keep any ambitious vultures off of him, far enough that when each of them take their solitary watch its easy to avoid looking at him.  In the morning after the day he died, Beau is shoving the last of the breakfast bacon into her pockets and Caleb is knocking the last remaining crumbs from a pan that had just been used to toast up a set of luxuriously good trail biscuits.  Caleb is giving the pan one final hit when Molly bolts upright gasping for air.





	A Name Held Against You

On the first day Molly doesn't say anything. The three of them have carted his body on the back of a pack horse. They have a spare. After the battle no one had really wanted to travel with Keg for another day.

That night they lay Mollymauk on a pallet, close enough to camp that they can keep any ambitious vultures off of him, far enough that when each of them take their solitary watch its easy to avoid looking at him. In the morning after the day he died, Beau is shoving the last of the breakfast bacon into her pockets and Caleb is knocking the last remaining crumbs from a pan that had just been used to toast up a set of luxuriously good trail biscuits. Caleb is giving the pan one final hit when Molly bolts upright gasping for air.

  
The sound of Molly's first new breath is harsh and agonizing, but it is not words. And he does not make any other noise for the rest of the day, pained or otherwise.  
When they talk to him, Molly does not reply.

When Beau says "Holy fuck man, you scared the shit out of me," and punches him in the arm, he does not flinch or tease her for a weak hit.

  
When Caleb asks "Are you alright, my friend? What has happened?" Molly doesn't move to meet Caleb's eyes.

When Nott tugs at his coat sleeves he does not move, but when Beau helps her put some force into guiding him toward the fire he does. When they load him up to share a horse with Beau, he does not protest.

"I swear man, if you start chanting 'empty' back there I'm going to punch you off the horse." Beau already looks twitchy.

From their horses, Nott and Caleb simply looked resigned. A bit of creepiness is an acceptable bargain to endure if the reward is Molly being alive. But Molly never starts saying "empty," or any other word. He says nothing at all.

Nott takes the time to talk to him anyway. She tells him his name is Molly, that it used to be Lucien, that he used to be in some sort of cult type thing and then he was in a circus and now rides with the Mighty Nein. She takes the time to tell him this each night. It is important to remember where you came from.

On the third day Molly speaks his first word, and that word is "No."

Caleb says to him "Mollymauk, come ride with-"

"No." Mollymauk uses his new word often and emphatically.

"Molly, come hep with the-"

"No."

"Well, guess it's time to head in, Molly will-"

"No."

"Can you say anything besides 'no,' Molly-"

"No."

And with that Molly storms off from the night's campsite. Beau is quick to chase after him, before he finds something actually dangerous that doesn't like no for an answer. Nott sighs and scratches her ear. "I guess he really is two."

Eventually they get it. It isn't about the ask for help with the chores or asking him to move or asking questions. No one ever needs to get a full sentence out because what Molly is saying no to is his name. They're not really sure what to do about that.

On the fourth day they stay overnight at a farm house. Molly tries to escape in the middle of the night. The escape attempt is easy enough to thwart. Explaining the disturbance to the farm owners is less easy. They beat a hasty retreat in the night

"Are we going to have to keep tying him up?" Nott cries. "How long is it going to take him to remember?"

"Oomph." Molly says from where they've tied him up and gagged him. But they're all pretty sure they know what he's trying to say.

Nobody voices the idea that maybe Molly will never remember. That maybe this isn't Molly at all. They don't need to say it, they're all thinking it anyway.

On the fifth day they hit a town and Caleb spells himself a disguise of a slender purple tiefling and checks them into an inn. He introduces Mollymauk as a feebleminded cousin, and pays the innkeeper extra to lock him in. The innkeeper looks at them with some alarm and then asks how much extra they planned on paying.

When they get back, Molly is still in the room. All of his jewelry has been taken of and then thrown around the room. The furniture has been similarly upturned.

On the seventh day they're back on the road, and when they wake up Beau has fallen asleep on her watch and Mollymauk is gone, as well as all of the horses. They find the horses loose in the next field, but Mollymauk is long gone.

* * *

 They wake up in the morning and lie still on their pallet. Cracking an eye open to keep an eye on the rest of the group, before slowly creeping getting up. They move quietly, without all the damned jewelry to clink and get in their way. It's just before all their captors awaken, when the last shift of watch is most likely to be asleep. They gather their things and what they'll need to travel. They're just about to load up the horse when they turn and see the woman in blue watching them. They freeze.

"You're uh, leaving then?" She says.

They wonder if they'll have to fight their way out of this. Wondering if they even can. The woman in blue has a staff which is nowhere near as cutting as a blade, but she looks like she's used her weapon and they most certainly haven't.

"You should scatter the horses you don't take into the field. It'll take us awhile to gather them up again. Give you a head start. Make it not worth doubling back."

They stare at her in disbelief. They never really stop watching out of the corner of their eye as they and the woman each take a horse and lead them out of earshot from the camp, then with a yell urging the horses free and on.

The woman stands there next to them, staring out into the open field.

"I'm sorry." She says. "I should have stopped the others. I should have stopped us from doing this. To you. I know what it's like to be forced to live somebody else's life. I shouldn't have let us do that to you. It's just-"

She seems to lose her words for a moment, huff in irritation, makes a gesture that they really don't know what it's supposed to communicate.

"It's just, we lost a friend. And that's not an excuse to be shitty to you but- we lost a friend. And it's hard," She sniffs. Her eyes are leaking just a little, and they have know fucking clue what to do about that. "It's hard to not try your hardest to get him back. Even if you know it won't work, it's hard to accept he's not coming back."

The two of them stand there in that field. The woman is trying not to cry, and they want to be angry at her for that. How dare she and her friends keep them captive and force someone else’s name on them. How dare she cry over that when she could have stopped it.

But it is hard to keep the full force of that anger focused on somebody who is so clearly just sad and angry and hurt as well.

They stand there, and the woman finally gets her emotions under control. “You better get going. Gotta go figure out who you're going to be. Listen, the body of yours, it's a little different. For one the last person gave it a few modifications. I know you don't have a dick piercing-"

They do not want to know why she knows that.

"But you’ve got some pretty extensive tattoos and your blood can do some weird shit. Molly- the guy in you body before- was able to cut himself and make ice. And light? And uh, make people go blind.  But only for a little bit. So uh, just be aware of that. I don't know how he does it but you should just know."

They two of them walk back to camp together. The goblin girl and the human man are still asleep.

"And listen, I know you probably don't like us very much right now and that's okay, but if you ever need any help. You come to the Mighty Nein. Maybe then you can introduce yourself to us."

They don't say anything to that, but the woman doesn't really seem to expect them to. They start riding back the way they came. They ride and ride and then they’re gone.


End file.
